Normally I would write a post to cover all the days for the weekend today. But since we are al-most to the end of our 28 Days to Hope Challenge, I thought I would slow it down a bit and talk about motivation and credit.
One of the struggles of keeping a home, maintaining it, cleaning it, taking care of the people inside it, is that it is: mundane.
It is ordinary.
It is necessary.
And thus…it often goes unnoticed.
There is not a celebration at the end of the day when you walk into your bedroom and leave behind a clean kitchen with swept floors and bathrooms that sparkle. No one fawns over you for picking up left behind toys and socks (and, and, and). Alternately, there is no one really and truly upset if you aren’t, for one day, the best homemaker EVER!
Besides maybe YOU! Maybe YOU are doing a celebratory dance when you get it all done in one day and keep the people you live with fed and alive. Maybe YOU could just sit and look at a well-ordered space and soak in the peace it brings you. Or maybe YOU are beating yourself up for not getting it all done every single day!
I could share that we should be working as unto the Lord in everything we do (and we should), but that doesn’t combat the struggles of daily existence. Life, as my mother-in-law says, “is so daily.” There just don’t seem to be the rewards of pushing through all the spills and messes and dirty dishes.
But, Solomon wrote (if I didn’t know better, I would say Ecclesiastes was written by a homemaker) in Ecclesiastes 5:18:
Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him, for this is his reward. {NASB, emphasis added}
The joy in doing the work is the reward!
And in the book 28 Days to Hope for your Home, Dana White talks about this very thing (minus the Scripture): that the result of doing these habits we have been doing is being able to enjoy living in your home and watching others enjoy it, too!
Have you noticed you breathe a little easier in the morning when you wake up to find dishes done, bathrooms tidy, and a living area that is better than it was at the beginning of the week?
Revel in that. That is your reward!
Take the time to notice that life flows much easier in your home because you are doing these habits.
And if you need a little bit more encouragement, please consider joining the Hope for Homemakers group on Facebook. I have found a great deal of encouragement among this group of homemakers in the last month. And I think you will, too!
The challenge for today is to do the habits and then take time to sit and think about the results in your home.
This Post Has One Comment
Beautiful post! Sometimes I have to remind myself that God sees everything and is pleased, even when it seems like no one else is paying attention 🙂